Prof. John A. Copeland, Ph.D.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

Prof. Copeland holds the John H. Weitnauer, Jr., Technology Transfer Chair at the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In this role, he is charged with developing programs that will accelerate the transfer of campus developed technology into areas that benefit the economy. He teachs senior and graduate courses on Computer Networking and advises a number of Ph.D. candidate graduate students.

He is Director of the Communications Systems Center whose primary projects are related to the NSF vBNS (very-high-speed Backbone Network System), transmission of Internet Protocol Data over ATM switched networks, and the high-level design of a digital backbone for the State of Georgia.

Dr. Copeland was Director of the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT) from June 1993 to Oct. 1996. As Director, Dr. Copeland had broad responsibilities for the organizational, programmatic, and financial development of GCATT. In that period, GCATT managed a Georgia Research Alliance program that distributed approximately $20,000,000 to six Georgia research universities. It was allocated $24,000,000 by the State of Georgia and $5,000,000 by private and industry sources for a 150,000 sq. ft. building which was completed in June 1996. He still serves as GCATT's Vice President for Research and Eminent Scholar for Technology Transfer.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech in March 1993, Dr. Copeland was Vice President, Technology at Hayes Microcomputer Products (1985-1993), and Vice President, Engineering Technology at Sangamo Weston, Inc. (1982-1985) and served at Bell Labs (1965-1982).

He began his career at Bell Labs conducting research on semi-conductor microwave and millimeter-wave devices. Later, he supervised a group that developed magnetic bubble computer memories. In 1974, he led a team that designed CMOS integrated circuits, including Bell Labs' first microprocessor, the BELLMAC-8. His last contributions at Bell Labs were in the area of lightwave communications and optical logic. At Sangamo Weston he was responsible for R&D groups at ten divisions. At Hayes was responsible for the development of modems with data compression and error control, and for Hayes' representation on CCITT and ANSI standards committees.

Dr. Copeland received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been awarded 41 patents and has published over 50 technical papers. In 1970 he was awarded IEEE's Morris N. Liebmann Award for his work on gallium arsenide microwave devices. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and has served that organization as the Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices. He served on the Board of Trustees for the Georgia Tech Research Corporation (1983-1993).


List of noteworthy achievements.

List of patents.

List of papers and presentations.

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